Ready or Not

Two years after Columbia, NASA restarts the shuttle countdown.

If you can imagine yourself inside a neon bulb, with pinkish-purple luminescence blinding you and mesmerizing you at the same time, then you can imagine the eye-popping view in the windshield of a space shuttle coming home. The winged orbiter is bathed in a thick, glowing ooze of searing air, called plasma. It's heated to 3,000 degrees by friction as the vehicle hits the top of Earth's atmosphere at 25 times the speed of sound.That conflagration outside the windows makes re-entry one of the most exciting and treacherous phases of flight. It destroyed the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, giving new power and poignancy to the words "mission accomplished" at NASA these days.

The space agency expects soon to be back in the business of launching space shuttles, after a two-year struggle to solve technical and cultural problems that led to the deaths of seven astronauts and the loss of a $2 billion orbiter. A workforce of more than 12,000 civil servants and contractors across the country is priming the space shuttle Discovery for liftoff as early as May 15.

The future of the nation's ambitious new space exploration goals is riding on the success of the mission. Discovery will deliver badly needed spare parts, laboratory equipment and supplies to the International Space Station, which the Bush administration has designated as the scientific springboard for America's journey back to the moon.

"We're going to see this mission launch, fly successfully and land," says veteran astronaut Eileen Collins. "We've got to prove that it's safe to get the shuttle flying again, and we have the confidence to do that." Collins will command a crew of six on the 12-day flight aboard one of the chief symbols of NASA's resilience. Discovery returned the United States to space once before, after the first shuttle calamity, the 1986 Challenger explosion.

The 114th shuttle flight will be the fourth for Collins and her second in charge. She and her crew, another woman and five men, have trained to the point that they can fly the shuttle "blindfolded," Collins said in a preflight interview recently released by NASA. In several meetings with reporters since January, Discovery's crew members have said theirs will be the safest shuttle flight to date. With Columbia, they say, NASA learned all over again that flying in space is risky, and people in the agency think differently now.

December 2002 was the last time a shuttle visited the space station, and the orbiting outpost sorely needs a service call. Two days of the visit will be devoted to spacewalks for maintenance and repair, including replacement of a broken gyroscope that threatens to prevent the station from steadying itself in orbit. Although the basic reason for the flight is space station logistics, an equally important objective is to test what NASA has done to fix the shuttle-and itself-since Columbia was lost.

The mission is as symbolic as it is essential. It will mark the climax of NASA's arduous recovery and the beginning of the end of the space shuttle program. A year after the accident, President Bush directed NASA to finish construction of the space station and retire the shuttle by 2010 in order to clear a path for Americans to return to the moon and travel onward to Mars. "Certainly the Columbia tragedy had more . . . than almost anything else to do with focusing the agenda of this agency," says Sean O'Keefe, NASA administrator from December 2001 until February 2005 and now chancellor of Louisiana State University.

Stem to Stern

Columbia was doomed from the start. Its left wing was punctured by a suitcase-sized chunk of foam insulation that broke loose from the shuttle's rust-colored external fuel tank about 82 seconds after liftoff Jan. 16, 2003. Mission managers on the ground misjudged the severity of the damage, and the seven astronauts aboard were none the wiser. Sixteen days later, when Columbia encountered the atmosphere at the end of its mission, hot gas got inside the hole and burned up the wing. The orbiter broke apart. Debris rained on 2,000 square miles of East Texas. Five men and two women perished.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board said organizational and physical causes were equally to blame, and ordered sweeping changes to make shuttles safer. Technical assignments included eliminating all fuel tank debris at the source, increasing the orbiter's ability to sustain damage, improving NASA's ability to detect damage through sensors and imagery, and inventing ways astronauts can inspect and repair damage in flight. On the managerial side, the accident board ordered the space agency to adopt more realistic flight schedules and expand training for mission managers.

NASA Associate Administrator William Readdy reported on the accident recovery at a House Science Committee hearing on the agency's 2006 budget proposal in February. "We are looking across the space shuttle hardware from stem to stern, including all the ground operations that we do and the management operations," he said, "in order to make sure that we come back not only much smarter as a result of the Columbia accident investigation, but also with a much stronger and safer program."

Engineers have redesigned the shuttle's external fuel tank, substituting heaters for sprayed-on insulation in areas where the tank is connected to the orbiter. The heaters will prevent ice buildup stemming from the super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants that fill the tank. Several other tank fittings also were modified.

Parts of the orbiter have been fortified, including windows on either side of the cockpit and the heat-resistant carbon composite panels covering the leading edge of each wing. Sensors have been implanted in the wings to detect debris impact and temperature changes.

The investigators detailed virtually all their findings in public hearings before the report came out, so NASA got a head start addressing the technical concerns. Work on management concerns came later. The report's characterization of NASA as a bigheaded bureaucracy that doesn't learn from its mistakes caught the leadership off guard, despite the advance warning.

The assessment wasn't much easier to accept almost 14 months after the accident, when a contracted study by a behavioral consultant reinforced the investigators' contention that rank-and-file employees were afraid to speak up, and NASA managers often turned deaf ears to subordinates with dissenting views. The company prescribed a cultural rehabilitation that started a year ago at the top, with O'Keefe. It has spread to several field installations, but not to the agency's standing army of contractors, and is expected to last at least another two years. A February progress report from California- based Behavioral Science Technology Inc. measured major improvements in NASA's safety climate and culture, but noted lingering perceptions outside management that nothing has changed.

Three new organizations arose from the accident board's damning critique of NASA's human space flight culture. For the first time, project management for the orbiter, solid rocket boosters and main propulsion system are woven together in the Shuttle Engineering and Integration Office. Safety oversight and engineering are segregated in the Independent Technical Authority, which enforces technical standards and issues judgments about a shuttle's readiness to fly, and in the NASA Engineering Safety Center, which provides expert technical assessments in numerous disciplines. Both are intended to function agencywide, not just for the shuttle program. Because they are funded at the corporate level, they are immune from program budget cuts.

The agency's chief engineer is the Independent Technical Authority. Rex Geveden has the power to postpone a shuttle launch, and he has designated about 30 "warrant holders" to serve as his eyes and ears in all areas, from flight hardware to ground support. Anyone with a nagging technical concern is obliged to report it. "We're trying to listen to our internal and external voices," he says.

'No Showstoppers'

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board issued 29 recommendations for preventing and detecting damage to the orbiters and improving shuttle program management. The board said NASA would have to comply fully with 15 specific recommendations before another shuttle was launched. Embracing the accident report on the day of its release in August 2003, O'Keefe promised NASA's unequivocal compliance with every mandate. He appointed an independent panel, the Return to Flight Task Group, to track progress. Then, he raised the bar, vowing to go above and beyond the content of the accident report to tackle 15 additional safety improvements.

NASA backed away from that vow as time wore on and everyone realized that some recommendations-such as the one to develop a "practicable capability to inspect and effect emergency repairs to the widest possible range of damage" to the shuttle's thermal protection system-were much taller orders than the investigators had imagined. The Return to Flight Task Group and the accident board chairman agreed with the agency that it should be enough to meet the "intent" of the most challenging technical recommendations for the first flight but keep working toward full compliance.

So, if Discovery flies next month, the astronauts will leave the ground without a foolproof way to inspect and repair in orbit the shuttle's most delicate parts-the gray carbon composites on the wings and the black-faced silica tiles that are bonded to its underside. They didn't have a tile-and-wing-panel repair capability to begin with because even the shuttle's designers considered in-flight fixes impossible. After a tedious series of trial-and-error experiments, engineers now think it might be possible to fill tile gouges and patch wing panel openings up to 6 inches in diameter, and have the repairs survive the scorching the orbiter gets during its glide back to Earth. For the time being, they've given up on bigger holes.

They've settled on five rudimentary techniques for tile and composite repair. Three methods will be tried on samples during the Discovery mission-two outside in a spacewalk in the open payload bay and one inside in the crew compartment mid-deck. Two other methods will be used only if Discovery actually is damaged badly enough to need repairs. None of the repair kits is likely to be perfected in time for the mission. Managers are planning to send them up anyway because their ultimate flight certification depends on a successful test in the weightlessness and vacuum of space. The task group has not approved the plan, and several astronauts have made it clear that, although they believe the shuttle is safe enough, they aren't interested in relying on any of the repair kits to get home.

One of O'Keefe's "raise the bar" initiatives was to designate the space station as a safe haven for shuttle crews on at least the first two flights. It's a desperate scenario in which an orbiter would be damaged too badly to return to Earth. The seven passengers would pile into the space station and camp out with the two resident crew members until they could repair their own ship or be picked up by another one. When Discovery flies, one of its sister ships, Atlantis, will be standing by to launch on just such a rescue mission, if necessary, about a month later.

The lifestyle for nine people aboard the station could be subsistence at best. Its oxygen generator is prone to breakdowns. Food and water have been in such short supply that an astronaut and cosmonaut living on the space station resorted to rationing for several weeks late last year.

The safe haven plan hadn't won approval by March 31, when the Return to Flight Task Group indefinitely postponed its final meeting to give NASA more time to resolve several issues. When Covey briefed reporters in mid-February, NASA had fully achieved only seven of the original 15 return-to-flight mandates. Members still had questions about the success of the year-old initiative to reform NASA's management and safety culture and about possible conflicts between the agency's new Independent Technical Authority and its pre-existing Safety and Mission Assurance Office.

At that time, the biggest unanswered technical question was just how much damage the belly tiles and wing leading edges can take before they must be repaired. The accident board's first technical recommendation-that NASA "initiate an aggressive program to eliminate all external tank thermal protection system debris at the source"-also remained open. Just three months before the scheduled liftoff, engineers had not yet satisfied the task group that they understood the physics of fuel tank insulation failure-that is, why the foam tends to bubble up, break down and pop off.

Despite the uncertainties, Covey told reporters in February he saw "no showstoppers" to issuing the task group's final report in time for a launch between May 15 and June 3. After that, NASA delayed two key internal technical reviews. Although the task group's endorsement was not necessary for Discovery to fly, shuttle officials continued to hope for it. The next launch opportunity comes in July.

Minimal Risks

NASA says it will not be possible to eliminate all the debris threats to the orbiter, but it has high confidence that the measures taken will reduce the risk. If there is any damage, shuttle managers are bound to find it and understand it. At the accident board's behest, they developed a plan to take lots of pictures during the climb to orbit and the first few days of the mission.

Discovery will fly into the history books as the most-photographed shuttle ever launched. NASA will have scores of cameras on the ground, on the external fuel tank, on the orbiter and on planes that will fly during the ascent. The crew will take video and digital still pictures of the fuel tank after it separates. To guarantee good visibility, NASA imposed its own requirement to launch Discovery in daylight.

The astronauts will spend their second full day in space using the shuttle's robot arm and a boom extension outfitted with 3-D imagers to conduct a tedious inspection of exterior areas they can't reach themselves. On Day 3, as Discovery approaches the International Space Station to dock, the men inside the outpost will take close-up digital views of more vulnerable areas.

Everything won't be perfect, but that is why NASA has designated the first two return-to-flight missions-the second, by Atlantis, is set for July-as test flights. "If we waited for everything to be perfect, we'd probably never get off the ground," said Collins. "But I'm confident enough that we have a good, solid plan in place and the risks that are left out there are . . . minimal."

Not a single crew member confesses even the slightest apprehension. All seven are resolved to feel as relaxed, prepared and confident as they ever have in life once strapped into their seats for liftoff. They will be the first astronauts to know the true condition of their spaceship before its engines fire to propel them out of orbit and point them toward home. They take comfort in that.